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Richard Photo Lab Test

I’ve been frus­trat­ed with pho­to labs late­ly. I’ve had so many col­or pho­tos ruined by slop­py pro­cess­ing or dig­i­tal­ly mud­dled by mediocre machine scans. It’s dri­ven me toward shoot­ing B&W almost exclu­sive­ly since the pro­cess­ing is less demand­ing. Almost all the com­pe­tent labs in the Boston area have gone out of busi­ness, leav­ing only Dori­an Col­or to trust for crit­i­cal work–but they don’t do scan­ning! And what’s the use of film pro­cess­ing with­out pro-qual­i­ty scan­ning in this day and age? (I do own a very nice film scan­ner, but scan­ning is hard and quite time-con­sum­ing.)

The Inter­webs enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly sug­gest­ed that I try Richard Pho­to Lab in Hol­ly­wood, Cal­i­for­nia. So I flew to Los Ange­les for DaleX’s wed­ding and took a bunch of pic­tures. I went home to Boston with the film, put it in an enve­lope… and mailed it back to Cal­i­for­nia. (So much for think­ing ahead.)

The first scans came back yes­ter­day. Here’s an unmod­i­fied image straight from the RPL scans. This is Kodak Por­tra 160 film on my Leica. The skin tones and expo­sure are basi­cal­ly per­fect right out of the box. In some ways this is eas­i­er than shoot­ing dig­i­tal­ly. I’m hap­py to say that RPL is my new lab of choice! I think there is more col­or in my future.